PERSONAL.
In our house the year 1870, which was to bring death and sorrow to so
many homes, and rage and despair to so many hearts, opened cheerlessly
indeed. The outlook for my father was dark and gloomy in the extreme.
Overweighted with debt, he seemed to be sinking ever deeper and
deeper in financial difficulties. The prosecution of the _National
Reformer_, the De Rin and the _Razor_ litigation, had each and all
left him more or less deeply involved. The great panic of 1866 had
dealt him a serious blow from which he vainly attempted to recover;
the identification of "C. Bradlaugh, of 23 Great St. Helen's," with
"Bradlaugh, the Atheist lecturer," was fatal to business. The spirit of
the boycott existed long before Captain Boycott lived to give it his
name. People were much too good to do business with an Atheist, and
just as the baker's wife took her custom from the boy coal merchant in
1848, so customers of a different class took their business from the
City merchant twenty years later.
My father began to despair of making his business succeed under these
conditions, and to think seriously of giving up his City life, and of
devoting himself to public work. This course would relieve him from the
anxieties of two clashing occupations; moreover, as he said, "while
prejudice and clamour bring ruin to me as a business man, they can do
me no injury as a lecturer and a journalist."[128]
[Footnote 128: _National Reformer_, April 17, 1870.]
In addition to all these difficulties--the outcome of his public
work--there were others, less serious in some respects, it is true,
but far more so in the discredit attaching to them and the anguish
they caused. I refer to those home extravagances and home debts,
due to my mother's infirmity, which all helped to pile up the total
liabilities to unmanageable figures. In March or April a man was put
into possession at Sunderland Villa, and remained there for several
weeks. My father felt this bitterly, but his course of conduct was
now clear before him, and unhesitatingly decided upon; thus once more
we see the pressure of money difficulties directly shaping his path.
A few personal words in the _National Reformer_[129] indicated his
resolve: "After five years' severe struggle," he wrote, "so severe,
indeed, as to repeatedly endanger my health, I find it is utterly
impossible to remain in business in the City in the face of the strong
prejudice excited against me on political and religious grounds. I
have determined to entirely give up all business, and devote myself to
the movement. I have, therefore, taken steps to reduce the personal
expenditure of myself and family to the lowest possible point, in order
that I may set myself free from liability as early as I can, and I
shall be glad now to arrange for week-night lectures in any part of
Great Britain."
[Footnote 129: May 22, 1870.]
Hence, when these people, moved by their "political and religious"
prejudices, drove Mr Bradlaugh from the City, and prevented him
from making a livelihood in the ordinary way of business, they were
unconsciously forging a weapon against themselves. Instead of giving a
small portion of his time to writing and speaking against Theology, and
on behalf of Radicalism and Republicanism, my father henceforth devoted
the whole of his life to that work.
In accordance with his determination to reduce his personal expenditure
to the lowest point, in the middle of May--before his words could have
been read by those to whom they were addressed--my mother, my sister,
and myself went to Midhurst, to find a home in my grandfather's little
cottage, and my father set aside a modest sum weekly for our board
and clothing. My brother remained with Mr John Grant of the Grenadier
Guards for tuition, and Mr Bradlaugh himself took two tiny rooms at
3s. 6d. a week, at 29 Turner Street, Commercial Road, in the house of
a widow who had been known to our family from her early girlhood. The
size and style of these rooms may be guessed from the neighbourhood in
which they were situated, and from the weekly rental asked for them.
Within a few days or so from our leaving London, our household effects
at Sunderland Villa were sold, my father retaining a few of the least
saleable articles of furniture to supply what was necessary for his two
rooms.
Instead of taking the most comfortable bedstead, he took the one which
had been used by us little girls, and this was the bed upon which he
slept until a year before his death, when I removed it without his
knowledge during his absence in India, and put a more comfortable
one in its place. Our nursery washstand, a chest of drawers, a
writing-table, and half-a-dozen chairs comprised all the furniture
he thought necessary for his use. My mother was not allowed to take
anything whatever with her beyond our wearing apparel and a few trifles
of small actual worth, but which she specially valued. My father's
books, of course, he took with him, these, and one other thing which
I had almost forgotten. The bedroom and sitting-room at Turner Street
communicated, and the walls of both were covered with shelves, except
just over the bed-head, which was reserved for the one other treasure
brought from home. This was a large canvas painted in oils for Mr
Bradlaugh by an artist friend, Emile Girardot. The subject was very
simple, being nothing more than a tired hurdy-gurdy boy sleeping in a
doorway, with a monkey anxiously watching. Whatever the intrinsic value
of the picture might be, to my father it was above all price. He had
quite a love for it, and often spoke of it--even in his last illness he
talked of it, and wondered where it was, and longed for it, for by that
time it had gone out of his hands.
So by the end of May we were all adrift and separated--my father in his
small book-lined rooms in the east end of London; my brother Charlie
with the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards, wherever it happened to be;
my mother, sister, and self vegetating in a Sussex hamlet. But bad as
all this was, 1870 held still worse things in store for us. In June my
brother was taken ill with a mild attack of scarlatina, of which we
knew nothing until he came home to us for his holidays on the 20th of
the month. Due precautions had been neglected, and almost immediately
after he reached us kidney disease began to manifest itself. From this
he died on the 15th July, and he was buried exactly a month from the
day on which he came home. The shock of his death was terrible to all
of us, and not least so to my father. Although barely eleven years old
at his death, Charlie was a lad full of promise, quick to learn and to
comprehend, amiable, honourable, and generous; and of these traits I
can recall many little instances. I have a photograph of him taken at
the age of seven or eight, and as I look at it I see his eyes gaze out
from under his square brow with a wonderfully clear and fearless look.
He was buried on the 20th day of July in Cocking Churchyard, my
grandfather's cottage at Cocking Causeway (Midhurst) being in the
parish of Cocking. Of course, we had to submit to the Church of England
service, for it was before the Burials Act was passed, but the Rev.
Drummond Ash was a kindly, courteous gentleman, and he made things as
easy as the circumstances would allow. The burial would have taken
place at the Brookwood Necropolis had my father been able to afford the
expense. As he was not, Charlie was laid perforce in consecrated ground
at the foot of the South Down Hills with Christian rites and ceremonies.
The Rev. Theophilus Bennett, a later Rector of Cocking, has stated that
his predecessor, Mr Ash, "attended" my brother "in his dying moments."
This statement is entirely without foundation; I am not aware that Mr
Ash ever saw or spoke with my brother at all, and certainly the only
persons present when the boy was dying were my grandmother, my mother,
our nurse Kate (who remained with us at her own wish to help nurse him
in his illness), my sister, and myself; moreover, Mr Ash was at that
time reported to be himself ill and away from home, having left word
that if "the little boy at the Causeway should die," all facilities for
his funeral were to be given, or some such message.
The telegram bearing the totally unexpected summons to my father to
hasten to see his son for the last time was handed to him on the
platform at Bury just as he was about to deliver a lecture. I have
been told that when he read the words he turned deathly pale, but with
that self-control which never failed him in adversity, he rose, and
with the least perceptible hesitation, commenced and went through with
his lecture. On Tuesday night he received his summons; on Wednesday he
was with us, though only to leave again by the early train on Thursday
morning. On Friday the boy died, and on that same day and the next
my father had to be in the law-courts as witness in a case relating
to the Naples Colour Company.[130] His grief for the loss of his son
was intense, but he shut it up in his heart, and rarely afterwards
mentioned the name of his boy, of whom he had been so proud.
[Footnote 130: This was an action to try the right of the Sheriff of
Surrey to distrain upon the Colour Machinery at Hatcham. Baron dos
Santos, of the Romish Legation, had wished to trade in Naples colour
in England, under the name of the Company of which Mr Bradlaugh was
Secretary. Mr Bradlaugh had bought and paid for the machinery to grind
the colours before they could be sold, and he claimed to carry on the
business until Baron dos Santos should purchase the things off him.
Obliged to raise money in 1868, when he was contesting Northampton,
Mr Bradlaugh borrowed £600 from Mr Javal upon the machinery, and he
in turn raised some money from the Advana Company. Before this last
had been repaid the defendants seized the machinery under an execution
judgment as creditors of the Naples Colour Company. Mr Bradlaugh was
the principal witness, and the newspaper report notes that he requested
to be allowed to affirm instead of being sworn, but said that he should
take the oath, if his lordship insisted upon it. He was allowed to
affirm, and at the conclusion of the case the jury decided that the
machinery belonged to Mr Bradlaugh, and therefore gave a verdict for
the plaintiffs.]